NEWARK — Their reasons were universal and personal; their cause common and intensely private.

The hundreds of people who endured 95-degree temperatures in Newark this afternoon to protest the verdict of the George Zimmerman murder trial were there because of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old Zimmerman killed last year.

But they were also there for their own communities, their own families, their own sons.

NEWARK — The chants have the same message. The signs have the same words.

But the usual suspects in the world of Newark dissent have a lot more voices joining their ranks.

Close to 200 people marched from the Essex County Hall of Records, to City Hall to the Prudential building on Broad Street Tuesday night, protesting unrelenting economic conditions they say have had an outsize effect on urban communities. Newark’s unemployment rate skyrocketed after the economic collapse and has hovered around 15 percent for the past two years.